Why aren’t the emails that I send through Amazon SES being delivered?

4 minute read

I'm using Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) to send emails, but my emails are failing to be delivered. How can I fix this?

Short description

The following are common reasons why emails that you send from Amazon SES aren't delivered:

There's a template Rendering Failure.
Your account is in the Amazon SES sandbox.
There's an issue with the email recipient's email address.
There's an issue with the email recipient's server.
Your email is getting labeled as spam.
There's a sending delay.
There's an ongoing issue with Amazon SES.

Resolution

There's a template Rendering Failure

If the emails that you send using the SendTemplatedEmail API operation contain incorrect template data, then you can get a Rendering Failure. To identify this type of failure, you must set up Rendering Failure event notifications using Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS).

Your account is in the Amazon SES sandbox

When your account is in the Amazon SES sandbox, you can send emails only to verified email addresses or to the mailbox simulator. If your account is in the sandbox, then confirm whether you're sending emails to verified email addresses. You can also request to have your account moved out of the Amazon SES sandbox.

There's an issue with the email recipient's email address

Your emails might not be delivered because there's a problem with the recipient's email address that results in a bounce. Emails can result in a bounce for multiple reasons, depending on the error that's invoked by the recipient's mail server.

Also, emails might not be delivered because the recipient email address is either on your Amazon SES account-level suppression list or the global suppression list. To remove an email address from your account's suppression list, see Removing individual email addresses from your Amazon SES account-level suppression list.

Requesting email address removal from the global suppression list is no longer a feature. For more information, see Amazon SES global suppression list.

To troubleshoot additional reasons for emails bouncing, see How can I handle a high bounce rate with emails that I send using Amazon SES?

There's an issue with the email recipient's server

Configure Amazon SNS notifications to determine if there's an issue with the email recipient's server that's preventing your emails from delivery. In the Amazon SNS notifications, review the smtpResponse that Amazon SES returns. For more information on the details that are included in the Amazon SNS notifications, see Amazon SNS notification contents for Amazon SES.

If you receive an SMTP 250 OK response from the recipient SMTP server, then Amazon SES successfully sent the message to that mail server. However, the SMTP 250 OK response doesn't guarantee that the message is delivered to the receiving email address. After Amazon SES delivers the message to the recipient's server, the recipient server's policies determine what to do with it. Each email service provider determines whether the email is accepted, rejected, or classified.

Additionally, the recipient server might be experiencing a problem that results in the email not getting stored in the receiver's mailbox.

Your email is getting labeled as spam

Recipient email servers can filter your emails as spam for several reasons. There might be an email authentication failure, or issues with email content quality or sender reputation. For more information, see Why are the emails that I send using Amazon SES getting marked as spam?

There's a sending delay

Instead of your email not getting delivered at all, there might be a delay in the process of sending your email. For more information, see Three places where your email could get delayed when sending through Amazon SES. You can use event publishing to monitor delays that happen when Amazon SES tries to deliver email to the recipient internet service provider (ISP).